A great part of the world, which is even better when seen by bike.Is it possible to bike Hopetoun to Bremer Bay along or at least near the coast? Fitzgerald River National Park is pretty remote and the roads few (I have only seen bits of it).

baabaa wrote:Is it possible to bike Hopetoun to Bremer Bay along or at least near the coast? Fitzgerald River National Park is pretty remote and the roads few (I have only seen bits of it).

It is "possible" but it will very much depend on your bike (I personally wouldn't consider it on anything less than a fatbike with 4" to 5" tyres); your tolerance to riding in a area where it is not approved and your tolerance to riding on walking trails [might be some alternative 4WD tracks which are likely to be "closed" as well].

My plan had been to dropped down on to the beach at Hamersley Inlet and then pick up the Hakea Walk Trail followed by the Mamang Walk Trail to take me through to Point Anne and the western boundary of the Fitzgerald River National Park. I did have an slightly inland option for the Hakea Walk Trail section but it still involved getting to the beach at Hamersley Inlet.

There are two option for getting down to the beach at Hamersley Inlet: (a) the blowout and dunes where there is a bit of 4WD action. I didn't try this but have walked it a few years ago. My vague memory of it suggest it would have involved pushing the bike up and then down to the beach. Option (b) the one I took was the Hamersley Inlet Link Trail. This is a walking trail, 1.5 km in length which connects the car parking area to the beach. This is a walk trail so not at all designed for riding. Read "500" log steps, read up and up followed by down and down followed by up up ... Lets just say getting a loaded bike up a log "staircase" is an interesting exercise in weight training

Once you get to the beach and yep I made it, you quickly hit your next obstacle for the day, a rocky headland which you need to then negotiate with the bike. This is followed further along by more steps. Get the picture?

I, with hindsight in a moment of gutlessness, allowed myself to be beaten back by the rocky headland and diverted back to the Hamersley Inlet Road (at least the "500" steps were in my favour going back) and hence had to take a detour around the park eventually coming out on South Coastal Highway.

I suspect I will regret this decision for a long time as I will not know if I could have handled the route through to Point Anne.

On this ride I made two critical errors:

(a) for the first time I didn't take back up paper maps so didn't have an easy to view overview of the ride and hence couldn't get a feel for other options such as taking an inland 4WD track across the park. I am pretty sure I actually rode a little bit of this track to camp at a fire fighting water tank but trying to work out where to go later on the track was frustrating without mobile phone connection and also not being able to plot it to the GPS.

(b) I used a Wahoo Elemnt as my GPS which is so dependent on the phone for routing outside of preloaded routes. Basically totally useless if you do not have phone range and want to plot an alternative route. Also I find trying to use apps such as OsmAnd, Locus Maps and the like without phone range is far from ideal. I also found that even Google Maps in offline mode is limited in such situations.

So what I will do next time is:

[1] Take sections of paper maps for the riding area; and[2] Plot possible alternative routes for such sections;[3] Replace the Wahoo Elemnt with a Garmin Edge 1030 which does not rely on a mobile phone; and[4] Be more cautious about what Google satellite imagery shows if OSM does not show a track. Got caught twice with the satellite imagery showing a non-existent track.

View from the tent as first light appears over the horizon at Roses-Quallup Beach, Monjingup, Western Australia

The first hour of the day was spent climbing the blowout from Roses-Quallup Beach, Monjingup, Western Australia up to the ridge line. It is hard to capture the steepness or difficulty of the climb, but no riding was to be had this first hour.

A moment's pause at Munroe Point as I look west to Warrenup Beach and on to my destination for the day Quagi Beach. The view is very deceptive; not reflective of what was about to come my way.

Last edited by Aushiker on Fri Jan 19, 2018 12:28 am, edited 3 times in total.

Day 2 coming to an end: Roses-Quallup Beach to Quagi Beach - 35.5 km - Elapsed Time 8 hours 16 minutes in total

Quagi Beach camping area in the Stokes National Park is very much car focused. The camping bays are all hard-packed so unless you have a free-standing tent you need to find a soft bit of ground as I did. The tent is a Tarptent Double Rainbow.

A longer day today at 78.4 km and an overall time of eight hours. It was all road riding with a mix of bitumen, minor 2WD roads and Munglinup Beach Road which I am sure is going for the most corrugated road in Australia.

This abandon property on the corner of Sears Road and the South Coast Highway caught my attention so a short break from riding to take in my other passion, photography.

This abandon woolshed on the corner of Sears Road and the South Coast Highway caught my attention so a short break from riding to take in my other passion, photography.

Back on the South Coast Highway; some days highway riding was unavoidable. Today was one such day. Despite the lack of shoulder the traffic volumes where not to bad and hence it was not an overly bad road to ride on.

Last edited by Aushiker on Sun Jan 28, 2018 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

RonK wrote:Have you moved some photos Andrew? Some are displaying a message from Flickr that they are no longer available.

Not moved but Flickr is being a right pain at the moment and breaking links when the forum code they provide is used. I am slowly going back and fixing the posts and changing the way I link to the photos to hopefully avoid this problem. Now linking directly to the image using the [IMG] tag.

Off the South Coast Highway now for the next two days . Springdale Road is a mix of dirt and bitumen and provides an alternative route into Hopetoun if you do not mind a bit of gravel riding. It has been in good condition both times I have ridden it which says something for the minor roads around here.

Lunching in luxury . A nameless ephemeral creek which must flow hard and fast when it does given the culvert works here was my lunch stop today. A change from the scrub on the side of a road.

Late harvesting on Munglinup Beach Road. Case IH equipment seems popular around here so not surprised to see a Case IH 8120 harvester in action.

Last edited by Aushiker on Wed Jan 31, 2018 8:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

How many hours did it take and from where to where? Where did the bus stop for a feed and was the food any good?

I've an idea the bus gets in somewhat late in the day - so if so, how did the first night go?, were you pre-booked at a caravan park?Was it dark when you had to put up your new tent? Did that go smoothly?

I'm thinking you did the bus trip before in your Hyden(?) trip due to the bus journey being broken into two parts? First to Esperance and early morning boarding onwards northwards? I'm interested in busing with bike to Norseman at some future stage.

Last edited by rifraf on Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

How many hours did it take and from where to where? Where did the bus stop for a feed and was the food any good?

I've an idea the bus gets in somewhat late in the day - so if so, how did the first night go?, were you pre-booked at a caravan park?Was it dark when you had to put up your new tent? Did that go smoothly?

Yes bus to Esperance and then a bus back home from Albany. The bus to Esperance this time left at 8:00 AM and arrived at Esperance at 6:00 PM. They have a couple of routes, depending on the day. This is the quicker one by about 1/2 hour I think.

Driver was good; he rides MTB

The bus stops four times for rest breaks/food. Typical West Aussie roadhouse junk food on offer ...

I had booked into a motel in Esperance ... going for the luxury option

I'm thinking you did the bus trip before in your Hyden(?) trip due to the bus journey being broken into two parts? First to Esperance and early morning boarding onwards northwards? I'm interested in busing with bike to Norseman at some future stage.

Going to Hyden was straight forward. That is the other route to Esperance so just got off at Hyden. Coming home from Kalgoorlie required a bus trip to Esperance with a real tosser of a driver, an overnight in Esperance and then a bus back to East Perth the next day.

rifraf wrote:Edit: Its ok, I've gone trawling through your flicker feed and spotted it on your Giant and not your Mukluk.

Yep Sella Anatomica on the Giant and B17 on the Mukluk. Based on my experience with the Sella Anatomica so far I will not be buying another Brooks and may well replace them in time with Sella Anatomica saddles.

Very comfortable out of the box, very simple to re-tension [Allen key] and the slot is used as a guide as to when to do the adjustment [simple measurement of the gap]. Also if the rails break you can send it back for a low cost replacement set.

Oh the raincover is also heaps better than the Brooks offering as well.

Breaking camp at the Munglinup Beach Caravan Park. I think I paid around $25 for an unpowered tent site and for that privilege I got to share the bit of grass with the generator which went all night. Funny that didn't get mention when I booked in.

Taking a break on the edge of the Lake Shaster Nature Reserve.

Love the name of this bay, Starvation Boat Harbour. I wonder what had happened to give it this name? Good camping at the harbour but I bypassed it this ride.

Back on the coast and now in a completely different environment. The area is known for its limestone as can be seen from the Southern Ocean East Road and the mining of lime. This is also the locality for Starvation Boat Harbour.

Thanks to Greg for identifying this plant for me; should have realised it was a gumnut! Greg is pretty sure it is a Eucalyptus preissiana Schauer [Bell-fruited Mallee].

Well the sign on the Southern Ocean East Road did say it was closed. Of course I had to ignore it; whoops. Swimming with tiger snakes and a fatbike where not quite what I had in mind for this ride : The outcome? A detour of some 42 kilometres.

Taking a break on Springdale Road whilst completing my 42 km detour around the Jerdacuttup Nature Reserve. Springdale Road eventually becomes a bitumen road before intersecting with the Hopetoun-Ravensthorpe Road.

Christmas in the bush? Not sure what to make of this finding on Springdale Road at all. It was just in the "middle of nowhere" so to speak; no driveway or housing nearby.

The ubiquitous floodway sign; common as in the West Aussie bush. The only problem is, the road is, eh going uphill here. Whoops! You see floodway's are normally low points where waterways cross the road.

Made Hopetoun. Had to snap an image of the welcome to Hopetoun "art work." The town is actually a nice friendly place to visit; well worth it.

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